Thursday 15 January 2009

Small eats and drinks from Kansai region

One of the joy of travelling in Japan is you could try all the interesting snacks and drinks you can't easily (or cheaply) get outside the country.

We happened to come upon the Ebisu Mastsuri when we arrived in Kyoto, and walking down the street festival and seeing endless food stalls was quite exciting, even though most of them were selling meat/fish items, notably Kansai specialties such as Takoyaki (fried/baked octopus balls) and okonomiyaki (with seafood/meat). There were also a few stalls selling fake Nintendo DS games; we didn't expect to see fakes in Japan haha! Anyway, we did manage to try some non-meat street food! Sorry about the small and blurry picture due to being taken at a busy street fair at night, but this was something I'd been hoping for - barbeque corn! It's not exactly the same as the western bbq corn on the cob, as there was some kind of sweet soy sauce was lightly brushed over the corn while being barbequed. Nom nom nom!

bbq corn

Later we each got a nice warm, freshly baked taiyaki (fish-shaped cake). I think I've only managed to get the most common version, which is filled with red bean/azuki beans paste, when outside Japan. However, this stall had a variety of flavours, so of course we jumped to the opportunity to get something different. My custard filled taiyaki was very nice, and IF enjoyed his chocolate one too.

taiyaki

We were hoping for a quick start the next morning and on a budget, so we bought some food in the supermaket next door to the lovely guest house we were staying at. A few hundred yen got us some nice veg & egg maki sushi rolls, chocolate bread/pastry and some kind of cheese bread/toast (not shown here). They were all definitely very nice as far as pre-packaged food goes. The maki roll was definitely 10 times better than your average cold, hard supermarket 'sushi' in the UK! And Japanese 'Western' bread is always interesting - they are kind of soft and a bit sweet, with favours or toppings combinations that you normally don't find back home. The layered 'Choco Zebra' below tasted sort of like half bread and half cake - different but worked quite well for breakfast, a bit like pain au chocolat??

maki sushi roll and choco zebra

Onto more Japanese 'Western' baked goods - this time in Osaka! After much walking around, we wanted to sit down somewhere (cheap) and have a drink and snack on the way to Den Den Town (the Osaka equivalent of Akihabara which we thought was actually better if you are after video games rather than anime and maid cafes). We didn't feel like spending ¥1000 at a UCC, a national coffee chain & cafe/eatery, and we just stumbled across a place near the Kuromon Market (黒門市場), Pane Pane, selling melon pan from a counter at their window. The 'melon' in melon pan (メロンパン) refers to the shape rather than the flavour - another Asian style bakery creation; similar to the pineapple buns from Hong Kong but with a much harder texture and exterior. We walked into the small but cosy cafe, and we managed to order a chocolate flavour melon pan (¥160) and some tea with the nice middle age woman at the shop. Our melon pan came with pieces of chocolate stuck onto the hard cookie coating around the softer warm inside. As we were enjoying our pan and little rest, we watched the lady busily serving the customers coming by the window and putting in and taking out trays of fresh melon pan out of the oven. The pan was a great snack and with a couple of cups of tea still only a few hundred yen, fantastic bargain (beats Starbucks any day)!

bread

Speaking of tea, our favourite drink to grab when on the move in Japan was vending machine milk tea. This one is English, it says so on the front!:

Miruku tei

Yep, it's cold tea, but the sweetened taste then works much better and makes it pleasantly refreshing. The machines with it were basically everywhere!

Vending machines

There were a couple different brands of 'English' or 'Royal' milk tea (and some low fat versions), but they were all good. Since it was winter, some vending machines also carried some of the bottled drinks hot. IF tried a bottled green tea which came warm and was a bit more bitter, and I quite liked a hot lemon and honey drink that was also common.

Finally, again speaking of drinks - the day after our deep fried feast, we decided to get some fresh juice to cleanse our system. We came across this juice bar at Umeda station in Osaka called Drops. The pictures of fruits and small prints of English on some of the advertisements probably made it really easy to work out what we wanted. We saw similar types of juice bar in other stations, so they are probably quite popular. We have been told that often non-native fresh fruits and vegetables can be quite expensive in Japan, so I guess you can't expect a huge Jamba Juice type portion, but it was really good and comparably priced to similar types of smoothie/juice drinks you get in the UK.


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